


The Warmth of the Fire

by Vaznetti



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 19:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/pseuds/Vaznetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A domestic moment, before the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Warmth of the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt requesting Sansa/Stannis (if Selyse had dies), and Sansa as Shireen's mother-figure. I imagine that in this universe Sansa was the first-born child, and is thus a couple years older than canon Sansa.

"Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine... You have such pretty hair, Shireen." Through the door, Sansa sounded tired. Stannis hesitated outside his wife's solar, not sure he wanted to disturb her evening routine with Shireen

"Do I?" his daughter asked. 

Stannis was inside the room almost before he realised it. "Don't question your stepmother," he said. Sansa turned to frown at him, but Shireen looked down. Stannis sighed. "Your hair is pretty, Shireen." He was rewarded by smiles from both wife and daughter. It was no lie, he judged: Shireen might have too much of himself and her mother for true beauty, but she had blossomed in his new wife's care, and Sansa seemed to enjoy filling her head with stories of knights and ladies as they sat at their needlework. 

He studied them a moment, in the warm glow of the firelight: the shy, scarred daughter he seemed only now to be getting to know, and the gentle wife who had brought unexpected warmth south with her to this storm-wracked castle. Sansa was still holding the brush, and put it down now; he could see that she was about to rise to greet him. "No, stay," he said. "I am glad to have found you both here, my ladies, for I have news to share with you." Shireen was young to hear it, but it would touch her as well, he thought. "Lady Sansa, your father has sent a raven. He has taken ship from King's Landing and will arrive here soon, along with your brother and sister."

"My father? Why? Is he not still Hand of the King?"

"That is not clear. He writes," Stannis paused and cleared his throat. "He writes that Joffrey is no true son of Robert's, but the product of incest between the Queen and her brother the Kingslayer."

"Queen Cersei? But surely..." Sansa seemed unsure how to continue. "But she is so beautiful!"

Stannis frowned. "Beauty and goodness are not the same."

"Why is he coming here, though?" Sansa asked. "Why not go north?"

"My brother had no legitimate children."

They were quiet. Sansa's eyes were huge and blue, and both her hands had come to rest on the swell growing under her breast. It was Shireen who spoke. "Do you want to be king, Father?"

"I--" It was not a question he had considered, but here in this room the answer was clear enough: he would rather stay here, in the soft, warm place his wife had made, waiting for the birth of their child. "It is not a matter of what I want. It is my duty." There were those who would fight him for it, he thought, who would say that Lord Stark was only plotting to put his daughter and his grandchild on the throne. It would be his duty to destroy them in their turn. He might not be able to remain in this room, but he could and would protect what was here.


End file.
